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A Snapshot of Cloud Storage Adoption

By Margo Pierce

02/05/13

Businesses use cloud computing differently than educators do, but access, security, cost, and scalability are shared concerns. The report A Snapshot into Cloud Storage Adoption produced by TwinStrata, a data storage company, offers the perspective of those using or exploring cloud storage options.

The company conducted a survey of more than 200 people that “focuses on the attitudes and experiences of a cloud-friendly sample group as determined by their attendance at one of two cloud-focused conferences.” Here are some highlights of the results.

Eighty percent of current cloud storage users claim that they can recover their data in less than 24 hours, with nearly a quarter believing that they have instantaneous recovery. In comparison, nearly one in six respondents who do not use cloud storage estimated that it would take more than a week to recover their data in the event of a disaster.

While both software as a service and infrastructure as a service have greater degrees of current implementations, cloud storage has the greatest number of planned implementations.

Scalability was highlighted as the top value that cloud storage could provide, according to nearly two-thirds of respondents. Meanwhile, 68 percent of current cloud storage users cited offsite data protection for disaster recovery as a key benefit. Only 26 percent of users with no cloud storage plans said the same.

“Security/loss of control remains the single biggest objection to cloud storage,” the report said. At the same time, "Almost 90% of respondents currently use or plan to use cloud storage—more than any other cloud computing initiative.”

Even though TwinStrata acknowledged that “our sample set was skewed toward organizations favorably disposed toward cloud computing in general and therefore likely toward cloud storage as well,” the report concluded with a sweeping prediction.

“Ultimately, our analysis indicates that the cloud computing market in general and the cloud storage market in particular is rapidly maturing,” the report stated. “As organizations—and their IT departments—become more comfortable with the technology, we expect these numbers to only increase, a prediction borne out by the high percentage of current cloud storage users that intend to expand their use.”

The sample size and bias on which this predication is based render that statement little more than wishful thinking. But the information shared can also be helpful for tracking trends in the cloud computing arena.

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